The Moz Blog

Roundup Thursday for the Week of 8/10/08

The author's posts are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

Stories, news, and other notable items from the past week:

Three star links:

Soxialize came out with Tweet Pro, a service that allows you to quickly and easily find Twitter users who share your same interest by searching through posted messages and profiles using keywords you enter.

Meet GWEI.org, which, of course, stands for Google Will Eat Itself. I'd eat myself if I were made out of delicious, delicious cheese.

A Salon.com article examines the Amazon Mechanical Turk, which is "artificial artificial intelligence," or people who make a few cents per extremely simple task (such as identifying the colors of products).

Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached faster-than-light information transfer. Rand adds, "Even if we can't get to alien planets, at least we can email them (this also makes Star Trek and Star Wars style communication much more believable, so that's nice)."

The Wall Street Journal says that for most people, college is a waste of time. I agree that college isn't for everybody. I think generally people understand that the point of most degrees (aside from medical-related specialties, law, and other necessary degrees for highly specialized careers) is to basically prove that you have the discipline to stick with something and work hard for X years in order to attain a goal. It's lame that you have to pay tens of thousands of dollars for a little sheet of paper that assures job prospects of this, but them's the breaks, right?

Four star links:

This guy fooled Google News. Because Google News has no human editors, it "cannot tell the difference between real news stories and spoofs, especially when both the real news and the spoof are ostensibly about the same topic." Hmmm, I wonder how the big G plans to fix this...

Slate Magazine discusses the "Google black hole," which is when Google buys a company and then shuts it down or lets it sit stagnant. It's an interesting read that gets you to think how the company founders feel when they sell their baby to a big company, only to see the fruits of their labor get abandoned and their staff dispersed to other projects.

The Colbert Bump refers to a politician's surge in popularity following an appearance on Comedy Central's The Colbert Report. It turns out that the bump is real...for Democrats. Republicans, on the other hand, experience a post-show slump.

All That is Wrong with SEO in the UK. Mrpurple's post wasn't warmly received, as it alleges that most UK sites commonly use link spam in their SEO efforts. The discussion in the comments is valuable, though--it's nice to see a community band together and argue their counterpoint.

How to Deal with the Problem Child in Your Adwords Campaign. I'd have said to put him in tae kwon do, which is what we did with my brother, but HannahS has a better solution. She provides some great tips on what to do with your "problem child" keyword in your PPC campaign. Paid search posts are always extremely valuable to see on YOUmoz, so thanks for your professional insight, Hannah!

SMX East October 6-8 in New York, NY. SEOmoz members get a 20% discount if they use discount code SEOmoz@SMX while registering. This discount can be applied to all access passes (full and one day) only.

Upcoming events:

SES San Jose August 18-22 at the San Jose Convention Center in San Jose, CA

Director of SEO/SEM for MySpace(!) in San Francisco, CA. Yes, THE MySpace. Your boss will probably be Tom. Oh, and also, the job description calls for someone with a "minimum of 8-10 years of prior experience in SEO/SEM," which pretty much narrows the field down to Danny Sullivan. Good luck hiring him!

Jack Kelly Garrett in Atlanta, GA, is an Internet marketer who has over 15 years of experience in business development and two years of experience in directing Internet marketing. He also has experience with marketing, sales, IT, copywriting, landing page design, PPC, and more.

About rebecca —
Rebecca Kelley is the content marketing manager for Intego, a Mac software company. She also guest-blogs/freelances at various places and runs a couple hobby blogs for shits and giggles.

Hey Rebecca - thanks for the shout! If any of you mozzers want to see more advanced seo tips for wordpress - leave me a reply telling me what you're interested in and I'll put something together for you.

The article about Amazon Mechanical Turks was really interesting. I had no idea that people with Internet access would really be willing to work for such low wages. It really is surprising to me. I mean, if you have decent Internet access, some time on your hands and a desire to make money --- is a few dollars an hour the best you can do?

From the WSJ piece: "Students who have gotten into well-known traditional schools, but who are coasting through their years in college and would score poorly on a certification test. Disadvantaging them is an outcome devoutly to be wished."

Shit, I'd be screwed lmao. Funny thing is that doing search marketing's already gotten me better job offers than finishing my remaining two years of law school would get me. Go search!